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Jack Reeves Eyre - NOAA Affiliate
Jack is a meteorologist and oceanographer working on storm surge model assessment and verification. During his 15 years in the industry, Jack has worked as a weather forecaster on an air force base, as a climate monitoring scientist, and as a researcher in ocean-atmosphere interactions and carbon dioxide removal. He holds a PhD in hydrometeorology from the University of Arizona. Jack's research interests include the myriad ways that the ocean and atmosphere affect each other, and use of observations and models to advance understanding and prediction of the Earth system.
Links: Google Scholar | Github | personal website
Fariborz Daneshvar - NOAA Affiliate
Fariborz is a physical scientist working on probabilistic prediction and uncertainty analysis of compound flooding. He earned his dual major PhD in Biosystems Engineering and Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University in 2017. He has a range of academic and industrial experience working on regional to global scale flood modeling, climate change risk assessment, and decision support systems development for water resources management.
Links: Google Scholar | GitHub | LinkedIn
Atieh Alipour - NOAA Affiliate
Atieh is a Physical Scientist at Ocean Associates Inc. (OAI), where she works with the Storm Surge Modeling Team at the Coastal Marine Modeling Branch within NOAA's National Ocean Service. She began collaborating with NOAA in October 2023, focusing on developing open-source tools for STOFS post-processing. Atieh earned her Ph.D. from the Center for Complex Hydrosystems Research (CCHR) in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alabama. After graduating, she joined Dartmouth College as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Her research focuses on improving flood risk estimation by enhancing our understanding of its key components: hazard, vulnerability, and exposure. She tackles this challenge through interdisciplinary research that integrates engineering, Earth sciences, data science, and statistics.
Links: Google Scholar | GitHub | LinkedIn
Felicio Cassalho - NOAA Affiliate
Felicio is a Physical
Scientist at the Storm Surge Modeling Team at the Coastal Marine Modeling Branch within NOAA's National Ocean
Service (contractor with OAI). From the beginning of his affiliation with NOAA in February 2023, Felicio has
actively collaborated with the development of several modeling efforts, including Python-based packages for
model skill assessment, vertical datum conversion, satellite altimetry and model collocation, and mesh
generation. Felicio graduated from George Mason University in 2023 with a PhD in Civil and Infrastructure
Engineering. His research encompasses many flood-related topics, including storm surge and wave modeling,
statistical hydrology, and hydrological modeling.
Links: Google Scholar | GitHub | LinkedIn
Yunfang is a physical oceanographer and hydrologist specializing in coastal modeling, ocean-atmosphere interactions, and climate risk analysis. He earned his Ph.D. in Marine and Atmospheric System Modeling and Analysis from the University of Massachusetts Intercampus Marine Science Graduate Program. His research interests include storm surge, sea level rise, wave dynamics, harmful algal blooms, fishery dynamics, remote sensing, and machine learning applications in oceanography.
Yunfang has worked on a wide range of coastal processes across tropical and subtropical regions of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans. He is currently focused on UFS-Coastal infrastructure and wave-current interaction modeling.
Links: Google Scholar | Github | personal website
Mansur is a Physical Scientist at NOAA's Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS), working as a contractor through Lynker. He collaborates with the Storm Surge Modeling Team at the Coastal Marine Modeling Branch (CMMB) and serves on the UFS-Coastal application developers team.
At CO-OPS, Mansur leads efforts to develop a unified and streamlined workflow framework for the operational STOFS (Storm Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System) modeling systems, including optimizing existing workflows for STOFS-3D Atlantic. In parallel, he contributes to the development and testing of the UFS-Coastal application, focusing on coupled model configurations, regression testing, and system integration.
Mansur earned his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island, where his research examined hurricane boundary layer dynamics and landfall processes using a high-resolution wind modeling system. His expertise includes coastal ocean modeling, HPC-based system development, and scientific workflow automation to advance NOAA's operational coastal forecasting capabilities.
Outside of his professional work, Mansur is a passionate aerial photographer who enjoys capturing lighthouses and scenic coastlines across New England.
Links: Google Scholar | Github | Personal Website
After his work in academia, Dr. Saeed Moghimi shifted to a leadership role at NOAA's National Ocean Service, where he serves as the NOS' Storm Surge Modeling Team Lead. He is responsible for research and development, operational support, skill assessment, dissemination, upgrades, and maintenance of the NOS' Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System. His expertise in coastal modeling continues to be utilized for tackling other complex problems related to storm surge predictions and coastal ocean forecasting at NOAA. Additionally, he is overseeing the development of the next-generation NOS' Coastal Ocean Modeling infrastructure (UFS-Coastal) as a part of NOAA's Unified Forecast System.
Links: Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn
Soroosh Mani is a Physical Scientist at NOAA National Ocean Service's (NOS) Storm Surge Modeling Team. He joined the modeling team towards the end of 2020 to work on the implementation of an on-demand on-cloud workflow for simulating storms; this got him involved in various aspects of coastal ocean modeling, namely meshing, model set up and general automation of the process, as well as underlying technologies involved, such as cloud services and containerization. Since mid-2024 he focused on a collaborative effort between NOS's modeling team and National Weather Service's (NWS) National Hurricane Center (NHC) to improve the currently operational probabilistic surge system used during the hurricane seasons.
Soroosh holds a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan. His educational background is in fluid mechanics, more specifically computational fluid dynamics (CFD). He gained over 10 years of software engineering and development experience since his graduation 2014; 5 years as a software developer under various titles at a computer aided engineering (CAE) company, Altair (now a Siemens company), and the rest as a part of NOAA.
Soroosh's hobbies include learning new things through online courses, listening to history podcasts during commute and gardening and other home projects during the days off work!
Links: Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn
Dr. Zizang Yang is a physical scientist at the NOAA's National Ocean Service. His research activities include development of the operational nowcast/forecast systems for water levels, 3D currents, water temperature, and salinity. He has contributed to the development of systems such as NOAA's Integrated Northern Gulf of Mexico Operational Forecast System, the Gulf of Maine Operational Forecast System, and 3-D Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System for the Atlantic Basin.
Dr. Greg Seroka is an oceanographer and meteorologist with the Office of Coast Survey in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Dr. Seroka supports marine navigation and disaster mitigation through several projects. Dr. Seroka is involved with an international effort to standardize oceanographic data for mariners, such as water levels (S-104) and surface water currents (S-111), which are important for developing coherent marine navigation systems across international waters. This effort also includes leading NOAA development and production of S-104 and S-111 data in support of NOAA's Precision Marine Navigation program. He also leads efforts to operationalize and upgrade a state-of-the-art global model and regional basin models for forecasting storm surge and tides (NOS' Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System, STOFS). The forecast tools resulting from STOFS, including nowCOAST where Greg is acting as product owner, are essential for safe and efficient marine navigation and for protecting coastal communities during storms. Finally, he is co-leading NOAA's Unified Forecast System Coastal Applications Team, which includes a project that is testing and contributing to the development of the next-generation of NOS' Coastal Ocean Modeling coupling infrastructure (UFS-Coastal) as a part of NOAA's Unified Forecast System (UFS).
Prior to his work at NOAA, Greg earned his PhD in physical oceanography from Rutgers University with a Graduate Certificate in Energy, where his research improved hurricane intensity forecasts and assessed offshore wind energy resources in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic. He received his Master's in atmospheric science from Texas A&M, where he worked on improving lightning forecasts, and his Bachelor's (honors) in meteorology from Penn State where he served as President of the Campus Weather Service.
Links: Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn
Yuji Funakoshi serves as a physical scientist at Ocean Associates Inc. (OAI), whereas working at the National Ocean Service of NOAA. In my role as a physical scientist focused on storm surge, I investigate the behavior of water elevation along the coastline as a hurricane approaches the shore. I employ computational modeling techniques to forecast water elevation and to develop the operational forecasting system.
Dr. Lei Shi is a physical scientist with the Office of Coast Survey in the National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A mathematician and oceanographer by training, Dr. Shi's work and research interests include tidal and coastal dynamics and ocean processes, vertical datum transformation, data assimilation, ocean tools/model development. Involved in various projects in vertical datum transformation, and OFSs development and implementation. Currently works on development and implementation of STOFS-3D-Pacific, a 3D Surge and Tide Operational Forecasting System for the Pacific Ocean. STOFS-3D-Pacific provides ocean physical condition (water level, velocity, T/S), nowcast/forecast data for marine navigation, disaster mitigation, coastal resilience, and searching and rescue mission.
Dr. Edward Myers is the Branch Chief of the Coastal Marine Modeling Branch located in the Office of Coast Survey's Coast Survey Development Laboratory. In this role, he oversees the branch's strategy and activities in coastal ocean prediction models, tools, and expertise that foster safe and efficient transportation, coastal resilience, and stewardship of coastal resources through world-class coastal and navigation services. Some of the strategic goals of the branch include (a) developing and maintaining national-scale, state-of-the-art, high-precision ocean models that meet operational precision navigation needs and can interface with NOAA's unified model environment, (b) building an infrastructure for the nation's navigation community to access and readily use NOAA model results and data, and c) being the experts in coastal ocean prediction and fostering a collaborative environment for engaging both the scientific and user communities.
Xu is an Oceanographer and Technical Project Manager at NOAA's National Ocean Service, with an interdisciplinary background in oceanography, meteorology, and computer science. He holds a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography and an M.S. in Meteorology from Florida State University, and is currently pursuing an M.S. in Computer Science (Machine Learning) at Georgia Tech. He is also a Google-certified project manager.
At NOAA, Xu serves as the technical project manager for the Storm Surge Modeling Team within the Office of Coast Survey (OCS), where he applies Agile methodologies to support the development of the Unified Forecast System – Coastal (UFS-Coastal). He has played a key role in the development and operational deployment of the Southeast Coastal Operational Forecast System (SECOFS) using the SCHISM model, and contributed to backend tool development for skill assessment of NOAA's national Operational Forecast Systems (OFS).
His research interests include high-resolution ocean-atmosphere coupled modeling, coastal hydrodynamics using numerical methods, estuarine and storm surge dynamics, and AI-based methods such as deep learning, convolutional neural networks (CNNs), and self-organizing maps (SOMs) for ecological Studies. Outside of work, Xu is a passionate painter and avid ping-pong player.
Links: Google Scholar | Github | LinkedIn
For collaborations or questions, please contact Dr. Saeed Moghimi at saeed.moghimi@noaa.gov.
Storm Surge Modeling